The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
(Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC,
in Spanish) was created as an umbrella
organization of regional far-right[1]paramilitary groups
in Colombia, each
intending to protect different local economic, social and political
interests by fighting insurgents in their areas. It is estimated
that it has more than 20,000 militants. The AUC has been considered
to be a terrorist
organization by many countries and organizations, including the United States[2] and the
European
Union. The organization was formed in April 1997.

The AUC claimed its primary objective was to protect its
sponsors and its supporters from insurgents and their activities, because the
Colombian state had historically failed to do so. The AUC asserted
itself as a regional and national counter-insurgency force. Former AUC
leader Carlos Castaño
Gil in 2000 claimed 70 percent of the AUC's operational costs
were financed with cocaine-related earnings, the rest coming from
"donations" from its sponsors.

The bulk of the AUC's blocks demobilized by early 2006 and its
former top leadership was extradited in 2008. However, local
successors such as the Black Eagles continue to exist and death
threats have been made using its name. On May 8, 2008, employees of
a community radio station (Sarare FM Stereo) received a message
stating: "For the wellbeing of you and your loved ones, do not
meddle in subjects that do not concern the radio station. AUC,
Arauca". A few days later the letters AUC were daubed on the front
of their office. This threat was made due to their participation in
a public meeting attended by members of a Congressional Human
Rights Commission on the 27 September 2007. Here, members of the
public denounced human rights abuses committed in Arauca Department
by different parties to the armed conflict, including the AUC.[3]

According to the Colombian National Police, in
the first ten months of 2000 the AUC conducted 804 assassinations, 203
kidnappings, and 75
massacres with 507 victims. The AUC claims the victims were mostly
guerrillas or sympathizers. Combat
tactics consist of conventional and guerrilla operations against
main force insurgent units. AUC clashes with military and police
units gradually increased, although the group has traditionally
been friendly with government security forces.

Links to
corporations

In March 2007, the international fruit corporation, Chiquita, admitted to
having paid the AUC from 1997 to 2004 $1.7 million in order to
protect its workers and operations, in Urabá and Santa Marta, of which at least $825,000
came after the AUC was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization
by the US State Department in 2001. These payments were often made
through a group belonging to the Convivir network, a
government-sponsored program of rural security cooperatives.[7] The
payments were arranged during a 1997 meeting between Carlos
Castaño with officials from Banadex, a subsidiary of
Chiquita.[8]
Chiquita subsequently made a plea bargain with the United States
Department of Justice, and agreed to pay a $25 million
fine.[9]
Colombia's attorney general, Mario Iguarán, also opened a case on
Chiquita. He stated that he will request the extradition of eight Chiquita officials
connected to the case.[8]
He has also charged Chiquita of using one of their ships to smuggle
weapons (some 3,400 AK-47
rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition) for the AUC.[8]
These charges were first brought ahead in a 2003 report from the Organization of American
States (OEA).[8]

Later, Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguaran Arana
contradicted himself by claiming the extraditions could not be done
since the implicated persons had not been "identified and charged."
Specifically, Iguarán asserted "there are indeed some Chiquita
Brands directors, but we are not able to ask for them in
extradition, rather we have to have some information contained in
the agreement reached with the U.S. court that includes a
confidentiality agreement." Nonetheless, specific information on
the identities of the Chiquita directors, executives, and senior
employees have already been presented before the Colombian Attorney
General's Office, namely Cyrus Freid Heim jr., Roderick M. Hills,
Robert Olson, Morten Arzen, Jeffery D. Benjamin, Steven Stanbrook,
Durk I. Jager, Jaime Serra, Robert F. Kistenberger, James B. Riley,
Robert W. Fisher, Carl H. Linder, Keith Linder, and Steven Warshaw.
[10]

2003-2004: Initial
negotiation efforts

Recently, after a cease-fire was declared (which in practice has
been publicly admitted by the AUC and the government to be partial,
resulting in a reduction but not the cessation of killings), the
government of Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez has begun talks with the
group with the aim to eventually dismantle the organization and
reintegrate its members to society. The stated deadline for
completing the demobilization process was originally December 2005,
but was later extended into February 2006. Between 2003 and
February 2 2006, about 17,000 of the AUC's 20,000 fighters have
surrendered their weapons. [3] This is more
than double the figure originally estimated by the government
before negotiations began.

A draft law was presented to the public which offered to pardon
the members of any illegal armed group (which would legally include
both guerrillas and paramilitaries, (i.e. members of both left- and
right-wing groups) that declared a cease-fire and entered talks
with the government, in return for, mainly, their verified demobilization,
concentration within a specific geographic area and the symbolic reparation of the
offenses committed against the victims of their actions. After much
discussion and controversy over it, a further revised draft was
distributed to the media and political circles. This new project
was not officially submitted for approval by the Colombian Congress and further public
discussion on the matter continued.

The bill, among other details, called for the creation of a
three to five member Truth Tribunal which would study each case
brought before it (at the request of the President), after the
groups/individuals sign an agreement to respect international
humanitarian laws and accept the authority of the Tribunal, in
exchange for a minimum sentence of five to ten years (part of it
could possibly be served outside jail) for those guilty of the most
serious crimes, the confession of the crimes which were committed
in connection with the activities of the illegal armed group, and
the completion of concrete acts of reparation towards the
victims.

If the Tribunal were to deny the benefits to anyone, there would
be no possibility of reconsideration. However, the President would
be able to veto individuals who did receive a favorable sentence.
This new draft version of the law would have been in effect only
until 31 December 2006.

Human Rights Watch spokesman Jose Miguel Vivanco publicly
stated, during one of the final audiences which were created to
discuss aspects of the original bill (of which he remained highly
critical), that the new proposition seemed to be considerably more
in line with international standards, at first glance, but that
more needed to be done in order to fully resolve the issue.

Salvatore Mancuso, one of the AUC's main commanders, publicly
expressed that he was against both any potential extradition of either
himself or his "comrades in arms" to the USA and refused "spending
any day in jail".

Also, there have been internal conflicts within the illegal
organization, as other AUC leaders have mutually accused each other
of being tainted with narcotrafficking
and their troops have even met in combat. These different,
regionalistic and sometimes warring factions within the AUC, make
successfully concluding any peace initiative a considerably
difficult task.

In mid-May 2004, the talks appeared to move forward as the
government agreed to grant the AUC leaders and 400 of their
bodyguards a 142 square mile (368 km²) safe haven in Santa Fe de
Ralito, Córdoba, where, under OAS
verification, further discussions will be held, for a (renewable)
trial period of 6 months. As long the AUC leaders remain in this
area, they will not be subject to arrest warrants. That condition and most
of remaining legal framework invoked was previously implemented for
the much larger San Vicente del Caguán area that
former President Andrés Pastrana
granted the FARC guerrillas as safe haven during the 1998-2002
peace process, but there are differences:

the local, state and police authorities will not leave the
zone, so Colombian laws will still be fully applicable within its
limits

the paramilitary leaders will require special permission to
leave and re-enter the zone, and government prosecutors will be
allowed to operate inside it in order to investigate criminal
offenses.

Disappearance
and death of Carlos Castaño

Paramilitary leader Carlos Mauricio Garcia alias "Doble Cero"
("Double Zero") or "Rodrigo", who since the 1980s had been a close
associate of Castaño within the AUC, was found dead on 30 May 2004.
He had strongly objected to what he considered an improperly close
relationship between the AUC and drug traffickers, and was also
opposed to the group's talks with the government. "Double Zero" had
fallen into disgrace in recent years, leading to the formation of
his own independent "Bloque Metro" ("Metro Bloc"), which operated
in the Antioquia area until it was
exterminated by rival paramilitary commanders from the AUC
mainstream.

Separately, in events which remain clouded and confusing, former
AUC supreme leader Carlos Castaño, who had become
relatively isolated from the organization, apparently suffered an
attempt on his life on 16 April 2004, presumably at the hands of
either his own bodyguards, those of rival paramilitary troops, or
perhaps even other entities altogether. Acting AUC commanders claim
to believe that there was an accidental exchange of gunfire between
his bodyguards and a separate group of paramilitary fighters, but
that he may still be alive and possibly in hiding.

Other independent sources within the group and among its
dissident factions claim that he and his men were captured and
tortured before being executed and then buried by order of other
AUC top leaders (perhaps his own brother Vicente
Castaño and/or Diego Fernando Murillo), who have become
increasingly close to narcotraffickers and their trade. Colombian
investigators found a makeshift grave and an unidentified body (yet
apparently not Castaño's) near the supposed area of the events.
Those same sources allege that the bodies of Castaño and his other
companions were dug up and taken to other locations before the
investigators could arrive.

It has been speculated in the Colombian and international press
that this could be a potential blow to the peace process, as
Castaño seemed to become relatively critical of the increasing
association with narcotraffickers in recent years and more willing
to compromise with the Colombian state, and thus the remaining AUC
commanders (such as Mancuso and "Don Berna") would
potentially maintain a much less open negotiating position in the
ongoing talks with the Uribe government.

The death of AUC co-founder Carlos Castaño remained unexplained
for two years, and was subject of wild and rampant speculation. One
of the more exotic rumours (dating to 1 June 2004), stated that
unidentified diplomatic sources told the AFP
agency that Castaño had been spirited away to Israel, via Panama, with U.S. assistance. No specific
reasoning or details regarding this claim were produced. The governments of the
United States, Colombia, and Israel denied these allegations.

Details about Castaño's possible fate began to emerge in 2006.
The Cali-based Nuevo Diario
Occidente reported that an assassin hired by Vicente Castaño
confessed to the police that he had killed Carlos in 2004. This
assassin's confessions allowed Colombian authorities to locate
Castaño's body in August 2006, and DNA tests confirmed its
identity in September that year.

Possible
paramilitary activities in Venezuela

In early May 2004, Venezuelan authorities arrested at least 100
individuals that they accused of being Colombian paramilitaries and
of scheming, together with part of the Venezuelan opposition, to
begin a series of scheduled attacks against heavily fortified
military targets within Caracas, aiming at the overthrow of President
Hugo
Chávez.

The AUC officially denied that they had anything to do with
them. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe congratulated the Venezuelan
president for the capture and pledged to cooperate with the
investigation, while President Chávez himself declared that, as far
as he was concerned, he did not believe that Uribe had anything to
with the operation, for which he blamed "elements" within "the
oligarchies of Miami and Bogotá", also implicating
individual high-ranking U.S. and Colombian military officers, who
have denied such involvement.

Colombian Vice-presidentFrancisco Santos Calderón
added that he hoped that the Venezuelan government would pursue
with equal zeal those FARC and ELN guerrillas who would also be
present in Venezuela. The Venezuelan opposition dismissed the whole
event as a "setup", claiming that Chávez intended to interfere with
the potential approval of a referendum which
sought to remove him from power.

Late
2004: Demobilizations

In November 2004, the Colombian
Supreme Court approved the extradition of top paramilitary
leaders Salvatore Mancuso and Carlos Castaño, together with that of
the guerrilla commander Simón Trinidad, the only one of the men
to be in state custody (Castaño's extradition was approved because
the court considered that the matter of his death was not yet
clear).

The court ruled that the three US extradition requests, all for charges of
drug trafficking and money laundering, respected current
Colombian law procedures and therefore they could now proceed, once
the Colombian president gave his approval. [11]

It has been speculated in the Colombian press that the
government would possibly approve the extradition of Salvatore
Mancuso, but would delay it for the duration of the peace talks
that he and his organization are conducting with the state. Mancuso
himself has declared that he will continue to participate in the
process despite the Supreme Court's ruling.

In early December and late November, there have been new events
in the peace negotiations with the AUC. First, several hundred men
of the Bloque Bananero (loosely translated, the Banana Producers'
Bloc) turned in their weapons and demobilized in order to be
reintegrated into civilian life. This group operated in the Uraba
region of northern Antioquia, where the AUC had dislodged the FARC
and gained total control in the mid- to late nineties. However, the
AUC remain in the area with the presence of other divisions in
order to maintain the peace and prevent the FARC from
returning.

A few weeks later, the Catatumbo Bloc also demobilized. This was
a milestone in Colombian history, for, with its 1425 mercenaries,
the Catatumbo Bloc was one of the most important AUC groups in
Colombia. With them Salvatore Mancuso, the AUC's military leader,
turned himself in. A few days later, the government announced that
it would not make Mancuso's extradition effective as long as he
avoided criminal activities and fulfilled his commitments to the
peace process.

Both of these massive demobilizations of AUC groups are an
apparent improvement over the first one in 2003 in Medellin
because on this occasion important leaders turned themselves in and
the weapons presented were assault rifles, machine guns, grenade
launchers and rockets, rather than the homemade shotguns and old,
malfunctioning revolvers that were turned in the first
demobilization. The AUC was supposed to have demobilized completely
by 2006 but successor organizations continued to operate.

2005: Legal framework
and controversy

Many Colombian and international observers are skeptical about
the demobilization's prospects and see multiple causes for
criticism. A concern shared by a high number of critics, both
inside and outside the country, is that the demobilization process,
if it does not provide a legal framework that contemplates the
proper doses of truth, reparation and justice, could allow those
who have committed human rights violations to possibly enjoy an
undue degree of impunity for their crimes. A different kind of
concern is held by a few of the supporters of the demobilization
process, some of which believe that, without a certain degree of
acceptance from the paramilitaries themselves, any unillateral
attempts at reducing impunity could stay in writing and not be
practically effective.

A smaller number of the critics have also expressed their fear
that the current administration could integrate the AUC into its
civilian defence militias or other military structures. Military
and government spokesmen have stated multiple times that there is
no intention to integrate the AUC into the state's legal security
apparatus. While no reports of that occurring have been put forward
yet, there have been signs of some individual paramilitaries
expressing an interest in wanting to join (or form) private security companies
in areas that formerly were under their influence and control, in
order to prevent possible guerrilla inroads.

The debate on the subject of potential impunity has had a high
profile in both the international and Colombian media, with
critical views being expressed in Chicago Tribune and New York Times editorials, in addition to
many Colombian outlets. The main argument of several editorials has
been that the international community should not help fund the
demobilization process until the necessary legal framework to
minimize impunity is in place. This position was also echoed by
representatives of the international community in a February 2005
donor's conference in Cartagena. [12]

After many public and private discussions through mid-to-late
2004, in early 2005, a number of Colombian congressmen, including
senator Rafael Pardo and Gina Parody (traditionally holding
pro-government positions) and Wilson Borja (a former leftwing labor
leader who survived a paramilitary assassination attempt back in
2000) among others, independently presented a multiparty draft bill
that, according to several observers such as Colombian and
international NGOs (including Human
Rights Watch), indicates a substantial improvement (compared to the
government's previous initiatives) in meeting the necessary
conditions of adequately dismantling paramilitarism and reducing
impunity. Among these sectors, there is a semblance of a broad
concesus in support of this bill. [13][14]

Colombian Congressional discussion on the
subject was set to begin on February 15, 2005, but suffered several
delays. The Colombian government's own official draft had
apparently gradually incorporated several of the provisions in the
Pardo, Parody and Borja proposal, but a number of disagreements
remained, which would be the source for further debate on the
subject. Other congressmen, including supporters of the government,
also begun to present their own draft projects.

On February 23, the top AUC leaders published an online document
on their webpage which stated that that they will not submit to a
legal framework that, in their own words, would force them to
suffer through an undue humiliation that their leftwing guerrilla
foes would not contemplate for themselves. They also declared that
they are in favor of laws that will allow their fighters to return
to civilian and productive lives in a fair, peaceful and equitable
manner. In the absence of such conditions, they claimed that the
consequence would be the end of the negotiations and their
preferring to face the prospect of continuing "war and death". A
government communique answered that the AUC should not put pressure
on Congress, the media or the Executive on the matter of the legal
framework, and that they would have five days to leave the Ralito
zone if they chose to quit the talks. The AUC later reduced the
tone of its earlier remarks. [15]

On April 11, an AUC spokesman repeated their claims that the
current proposal for amnesty was too harsh primarily because it
still allowed extradition for drug charges. [16]

Mass extradition to the
U.S.

In the early morning of May 13, 2008, thirteen high-profile
paramilitary leaders were taken from their jail cells in a surprise
action by the Colombian government. According to Colombian Interior
Minister Carlos Holguin they have been refusing to
comply to the country's Peace and Justice law and were therefore
extradited to the United States. Amongst them are Salvatore
Mancuso, Don Berna, Jorge 40, Cuco Vanoy and Diego Ruiz
Arroyave (cousin of assassinated paramilitary leades Miguel
Arroyave)..[17]
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe said immediately afterwards the
United States has agreed to compensate the victims of extradited
paramilitary warlords with any international assets they might
surrender. The US State Department said the US' courts can also
help the victims by sharing information on atrocities with
Colombian authorities.[18]

The National Movement of State Crimes, a coalition of several
victim organizations that have suffered from state or paramilitary
violence, has asked “to return the paramilitary chiefs to the
Colombian authorities so they may be processed by the ordinary
justice system and not under the framework of the Law of Justice
and Peace, since this framework benefits the victimizers and not
the victims, since they have not told all of the truth, have not
made comprehensive reparations to the victims, and have not
dismantled their criminal structures.” [19]

The Office in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights stated that “[...] according to Colombian law, the
reasons claimed by the President of the Republic to proceed with
the previously-suspended extraditions are also grounds for their
removal from the application of the ‘Law of Justice and Peace’ and
for the loss of the benefits established therein”.[19]

The Inter-American Commission stated that this “affects the
Colombian State’s obligation to guarantee victims’ rights to truth,
justice, and reparations for the crimes committed by the
paramilitary groups. The extradition impedes the investigation and
prosecution of such grave crimes through the avenues established by
the Justice and Peace Law in Colombia and through the Colombian
justice system’s regular criminal procedures. It also closes the
door to the possibility that victims can participate directly in
the search for truth about crimes committed during the conflict,
and limits access to reparations for damages that were caused. This
action also interferes with efforts to determine links between
agents of the State and these paramilitary leaders.” [19]

After his extradition to the United States, Colombian
paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso has continued to
testify via satellite as part of the Justice and Peace process. On
November 18, 2008, Revista Semana reported on Mancuso's
declarations about the 1997 El Aro massacre, in which he stated
that the AUC had received logistical help from the Colombian
military and police.[20]